| Proving a Negative
In my particular case, I'm showing the food movement (previously the mainline churches and sustainable agriculture) that it's really been on the wrong side of the biggest issue of farm (ie. food) policy, the historically multi billion dollar issue of the core of the commodity title. In this case, however, the key issue is a negative. The key issue, that is, is that the policy (price floors with supply management on the bottom side of major farm prices, and price ceilings with strategic reserves on top) is absent. It's been totally absent for three farm bills (1996, 2002, 2008). That's one problem. It's a bad farm bill, not for what's in it, but for what's not in it (that must be in it).
The American Advocacy Paradigm
One factor in all of this may be something akin to the advocacy system in American Law. Lawyers on each side duke it out, with the shared understanding that this is the way that justice is best served, even as lawyers maintain shady reputations.
Translating that to the internet: perhaps the bloggers work best when the issue is partisan, either in terms of political parties, or in terms of important values.
This issue may lack partisanship. It may not have enough partisanship to really kick into gear. First, the political partisanship of it is a problem. Democrats and Republicans were divided on it in 1996, but on the same side in 2002 and 2008. Historically, of course, this was a huge Democratic issue coming out of the Party's proud tradition of the New Deal (a policy issue that provided huge benefits basically without government costs (ie. price floors and no diverting, compensatory subsidies). So how does it then play out at Daily Kos? You can't really hammer the Republicans on this issue if you're on the same side. Likewise, where's the interest of Republicans in hammering the Democrats for betraying their party. Hey, they're already on your side. You want to keep it quiet and spout off about small side issues that divert attention.
The Green Party and the Ralph Nader campaigns are also on the same side of it, the wrong side (though the Iowa Green Party flirted with support for price floors and etc. about five years ago, under my influence).
(There may be another, smaller third (seventh?) party that's on board. Al Krebs was active in one such movement, back in the 1990s, I think.
What about core value partisanship? For those into corporate values, the absence of these policies works. Subsidies are supposed to be an ideological problem for Conservatives, but they haven't seemed to mind, going back to Nixon. They led the way in increasing subsidies under Reagan (ie. Dole) and Gingrich (ie. Lugar). Anyway subsidies are a great diversion, the main strategy keeping these policies absent.
How about progressives, liberals? Well, they're largely on the wrong side. They worked hard tinkering around with subsidies, (the great false issue that has virtually NO impact on prices and therefore on the smorgasbord of problems, CAFOs/dumping/transfats-fructose-obesity-diabetes). There's no smoking gun for exposing their political opponents, only for exposing themselves and their leaders. (Ok who wants to join me me in exposing Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, Food Inc., Fresh, Marion Nestle, etc. as offering false solutions for the Commodity Title? Won't that hurt the movement. "Foodies" are already bashed enough for totally unfair reasons, aren't they? Why add this?)
Involving Leaders
In my experience, changes like this are most difficult for the leaders themselves. In any case, the leaders tend to be overworked. Even those who do understand the issue, like those at the organizations I most often link, may not spend much time surfing the web to see who's saying what. They're swamped with immediate issues in congressional implementation of the farm bill. I don't find any organization (ie. who understands this movement issue) writing explicitly about what the movement has done wrong on the web, with few exceptions, (including Farm Bill Girl).
Back in the 1990s at a meeting of the Midwest Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (which was heavily involved in policy development at that time), a side meeting was held to try to build a large umbrella group. Staff from the National Family Farm Coalition and Farm Aid spoke (on the price floor side), Along with MSAWG (ie. Chuck Hassebrook of the Center for Rural Affairs, a long time opponent of price floors) and a relatively new group at that time aiming to serve as the overarching umbrella, the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture (recently merged with the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition as the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition). After the leaders gave a series of nice (overly nice?) talks, I hammered them from the floor during Q and A. for failing to come together and work out the one major sticking point between them (which I'd heard from Ferd Hoefner at SAC), the lack of agreement on proposed price floors and/or price floor levels. Afterwards the Executive Director of NCSA privately showered me with lavish praise, explaining that in no way could she be the much needed hatchet (wo)man on this issue since her primary task was to get everyone together. In other words, she loved my kicking butts on BOTH sides, but wouldn't go there at all herself. This too is surely a factor. No organization wants to start a turf war within the overall movement of shared values.
Probably something along the lines of good cop/bad cop is needed. I'm afraid I keep finding myself in the bad cop role. Are there any good cops out there with sufficient skills to break down these alleged "criminal leaders," (duh, how would a good cop phrase that?).
That Incorrigible Subsidy Paradigm
Thirdly, subsidies, obviously, serve as an enormous diversion away from attention to the needed policies. It takes an enormous paradigm shift to get off of the subsidy bandwagon after years of committed activism based upon it, and go after Cargill and ADM for their yearly billions of secret, hidden, off the books Commodity Title benefits. About every time you turn back to read one of the leading books, or view a leader on YouTube or in a movie, they put you right back into the subsidy smokescreen. Same for online, or at conferences. "They're everywhere! They're everywhere!"
Foundations are Out of the Loop
Another factor surely is that foundations aren't interested in funding this part of the movement. Like so many others else, they don't know that they're on the wrong side (anti-environment/pro export dumping/pro transfats and high fructose corn syrup). (More on foundations and other funders here in my blog: "Stuffed Foodie Movement, Starved Peasant and Family Farm Movements," here http://www.zcommunications.org...
Fill me in folks. Can the blogosphere solve a problem like this (get to the truth and then get the truth out to change the paradigm BEFORE the books and footnoted documents are written for the lead up to the next farm bill)? I see a big job opening here. Any takers? |
